WestJet Encore applies for LMIA to hire foreign pilot

[PeakLeverage]

If only monopoly mail service was as important as air travel. Then pilots could be allowed to strike without being sent back to work.

(Sarcastic statement, both professions should be allowed to strike uninterrupted)

The only pilot group in recent history to get "forced back to work" was Air Canada in 2012 under a Conservative government.

12 years later, that same Conservative MP who tabled that legislation was publicly supporting Air Canada pilots on national TV. "I don't see why Canadian pilots are worth less than American pilots". Literally his quote.

Then the Air Canada pilots union buckled because they were somehow getting forced back to work. I guess they are special like their moms say they are.

So much leverage to have national attention.

But not that much leverage because they are getting forced back to work. Although literally every other labour group outside the rail fiasco has been left alone for at least a week. Mostly longer.

[canadianfly]

Let's all apply at Encore, technically they have to take us

[Zhangxs]

I don’t understand their logic. In Canada, we have more pilots than required. I guess even if WestJet Encore wants to hire 100 or 200 pilots, they can still find more qualified candidates than their target. It’s the current market.

[turbo-prop]

If they gave the pilots about a 35% increase I would consider going.

[Jean-Pierre]

If they gave the pilots about a 35% increase I would consider going.

I don’t understand their logic. In Canada, we have more pilots than required. I guess even if WestJet Encore wants to hire 100 or 200 pilots, they can still find more qualified candidates than their target. It’s the current market.

There it is really. They want people that will work for even less than us.

[A310Heavy]

Lol...I thought Encore was shutting down and if the TA failed they were done?

Bede...JBI...where you shills at?

Shill_Bill! Welcome back! How's Delta?

For non-troll posters, it sounds like things are not directly as they appear - expect an update in the next few days from the parties involved. I'm not condoning anything done by the company, but there's more to this story.

As for the long passed issue of TA2, at the time, Encore had 47 aircraft. Now, 2 have exited the fleet, 12 have apparently been sold but are still stored, and another 8 are still in storage. So they're now operating only 25 tails even though WestJet mainline is short aircraft and using ex-Lynx and Swoop interior aircraft.

To put it another way, Encore could offer better working conditions and potentially attract more pilots to Encore to get at least another 8 aircraft flying (and start taking the 737 with substandard interiors offline to upgrade them), but it's simply not worth it for the Company to do so. Encore has a role to play, but under this management team, it's role is getting smaller.

The fundamental flaw in your argument is that pilot wages make any difference. The fact you buy into this is extremely concerning. Hopefully you're not involved with a pilot union.

I've read your posts on trying to compare to Silver Airways. A small island hoping ATR operation. They were literally the ass crack of regional aviation in the US for a decade. They were the 2nd lowest paying airline only behind Great Lakes ie Great Mistakes which has since gone out of business citing the reason as a "pilot shortage".

Silver Airways paid less than $20 a hour. They since have joined forces with ALPA and signed a deal in 2022, which was still during COVID. You have literally hunted down the lowest common denominator to arbitrarily push your narrative that Encore is somehow paying pilots well.

It is true the company makes the decisions on operations. If they can't run profitable routes than stop..fine.

It should NEVER be on the backs of pilots. EVER

And certainly not on some foreign cheap labour scheme. That is some next level pathetic.

[flyingfool]

Well said!!

[Eric Janson]

I guess you've never spent time in Nigeria, Angola or India.

Actually I have. India every month or two. Even been to the rippers in Lagos. Why?

Then you'll understand why the locals want to leave. In 2 of these countries my Airline won't let crews leave their hotel.

This is a great opportunity for anyone in those countries with a Dash 8 rating.

[Victory]

Do you just rotate in or do you actually work there? Pilots live like kings. They have maids, chefs, family compounds, chauffeurs. I'm not sure they're going to like living in someone's basement in Toronto.

[‘Bob’]

Yeah, I’m sure they told Napoleon the same thing when he was exiled in St Helena.

[GeoffPilot]

Yeah, I’m sure they told Napoleon the same thing when he was exiled in St Helena.

Lol Bob

False equivalence or a "red herring"

Napoleon didn't have a choice. You literally said that in your comment. He was exiled by the British.

Secondly, they could have easily just executed him.

Are you comparing working in a modern city like Dubai as the same when you could literally fly home to Canuckistan in a day?

We don't travel on wooden ships anymore.

C'mon man.

[ClearedDirect]

Lol...I thought Encore was shutting down and if the TA failed they were done?

Bede...JBI...where you shills at?

Shill_Bill! Welcome back! How's Delta?

For non-troll posters, it sounds like things are not directly as they appear - expect an update in the next few days from the parties involved. I'm not condoning anything done by the company, but there's more to this story.

As for the long passed issue of TA2, at the time, Encore had 47 aircraft. Now, 2 have exited the fleet, 12 have apparently been sold but are still stored, and another 8 are still in storage. So they're now operating only 25 tails even though WestJet mainline is short aircraft and using ex-Lynx and Swoop interior aircraft.

To put it another way, Encore could offer better working conditions and potentially attract more pilots to Encore to get at least another 8 aircraft flying (and start taking the 737 with substandard interiors offline to upgrade them), but it's simply not worth it for the Company to do so. Encore has a role to play, but under this management team, it's role is getting smaller.

The fundamental flaw in your argument is that pilot wages make any difference. The fact you buy into this is extremely concerning. Hopefully you're not involved with a pilot union.

I've read your posts on trying to compare to Silver Airways. A small island hoping ATR operation. They were literally the ass crack of regional aviation in the US for a decade. They were the 2nd lowest paying airline only behind Great Lakes ie Great Mistakes which has since gone out of business citing the reason as a "pilot shortage".

Silver Airways paid less than $20 a hour. They since have joined forces with ALPA and signed a deal in 2022, which was still during COVID. You have literally hunted down the lowest common denominator to arbitrarily push your narrative that Encore is somehow paying pilots well.

It is true the company makes the decisions on operations. If they can't run profitable routes than stop..fine.

It should NEVER be on the backs of pilots. EVER

And certainly not on some foreign cheap labour scheme. That is some next level pathetic.

It is crazy pilots think wage increases are the epitome of market profitability.

Look at Delta/United/American. Those pilots are upper class straight up. Most valuable airline brands in the world and profitable nonetheless.

Onex has a market cap of $8 billion. If they paid they had starting captain pay of $150 a hour. How much would that cost? 100 pilots x $40 x 1000 hrs = $4 million

Less than one executive and you got all your problems solved. No foreign bullshit required. Hiring top candidates.

But instead these corporate blood suckers would rather do anything but. I think some of these sympathizers need to realize that you are negotiating against pieces of shit and stop the Stockholm Syndrome that plagues pilots.

Just get to reality and stop it with the excuses. Bede, JBI, others. Just stop. No more excuses.

[Canadaflyer46]

Shill_Bill! Welcome back! How's Delta?

For non-troll posters, it sounds like things are not directly as they appear - expect an update in the next few days from the parties involved. I'm not condoning anything done by the company, but there's more to this story.

As for the long passed issue of TA2, at the time, Encore had 47 aircraft. Now, 2 have exited the fleet, 12 have apparently been sold but are still stored, and another 8 are still in storage. So they're now operating only 25 tails even though WestJet mainline is short aircraft and using ex-Lynx and Swoop interior aircraft.

To put it another way, Encore could offer better working conditions and potentially attract more pilots to Encore to get at least another 8 aircraft flying (and start taking the 737 with substandard interiors offline to upgrade them), but it's simply not worth it for the Company to do so. Encore has a role to play, but under this management team, it's role is getting smaller.

The fundamental flaw in your argument is that pilot wages make any difference. The fact you buy into this is extremely concerning. Hopefully you're not involved with a pilot union.

I've read your posts on trying to compare to Silver Airways. A small island hoping ATR operation. They were literally the ass crack of regional aviation in the US for a decade. They were the 2nd lowest paying airline only behind Great Lakes ie Great Mistakes which has since gone out of business citing the reason as a "pilot shortage".

Silver Airways paid less than $20 a hour. They since have joined forces with ALPA and signed a deal in 2022, which was still during COVID. You have literally hunted down the lowest common denominator to arbitrarily push your narrative that Encore is somehow paying pilots well.

It is true the company makes the decisions on operations. If they can't run profitable routes than stop..fine.

It should NEVER be on the backs of pilots. EVER

And certainly not on some foreign cheap labour scheme. That is some next level pathetic.

It is crazy pilots think wage increases are the epitome of market profitability.

Look at Delta/United/American. Those pilots are upper class straight up. Most valuable airline brands in the world and profitable nonetheless.

Onex has a market cap of $8 billion. If they paid they had starting captain pay of $150 a hour. How much would that cost? 100 pilots x $40 x 1000 hrs = $4 million

Less than one executive and you got all your problems solved. No foreign bullshit required. Hiring top candidates.

But instead these corporate blood suckers would rather do anything but. I think some of these sympathizers need to realize that you are negotiating against pieces of shit and stop the Stockholm Syndrome that plagues pilots.

Just get to reality and stop it with the excuses. Bede, JBI, others. Just stop. No more excuses.

The WJ AME strike was a classic example of this. The Execs pissed away likely over $100m plus stranded 100,000 pax all over. In refusing to budge over the AME's demands which amounted to only an extra $8m, which they ended up paying anyway after 3 days of strikes. Corporate blood suckers is right.

On the subject of Encore, I believe we will see it sold off shortly. Certainly before the IPO. The business model is no longer sustainable. This may be why their MEC chair sold them up the river by agreeing to no firm career progression in exhange for some higher captain pay. Likely the writing was on the wall during negotiations that "flow" is a thing of the distant past.

[JBI]

The fundamental flaw in your argument is that pilot wages make any difference. The fact you buy into this is extremely concerning. Hopefully you're not involved with a pilot union.

I've read your posts on trying to compare to Silver Airways. A small island hoping ATR operation. They were literally the ass crack of regional aviation in the US for a decade. They were the 2nd lowest paying airline only behind Great Lakes ie Great Mistakes which has since gone out of business citing the reason as a "pilot shortage".

Silver Airways paid less than $20 a hour. They since have joined forces with ALPA and signed a deal in 2022, which was still during COVID. You have literally hunted down the lowest common denominator to arbitrarily push your narrative that Encore is somehow paying pilots well.

It is true the company makes the decisions on operations. If they can't run profitable routes than stop..fine.

It should NEVER be on the backs of pilots. EVER

And certainly not on some foreign cheap labour scheme. That is some next level pathetic.

It is crazy pilots think wage increases are the epitome of market profitability.

Look at Delta/United/American. Those pilots are upper class straight up. Most valuable airline brands in the world and profitable nonetheless.

Onex has a market cap of $8 billion. If they paid they had starting captain pay of $150 a hour. How much would that cost? 100 pilots x $40 x 1000 hrs = $4 million

Less than one executive and you got all your problems solved. No foreign bullshit required. Hiring top candidates.

But instead these corporate blood suckers would rather do anything but. I think some of these sympathizers need to realize that you are negotiating against pieces of shit and stop the Stockholm Syndrome that plagues pilots.

Just get to reality and stop it with the excuses. Bede, JBI, others. Just stop. No more excuses.

The WJ AME strike was a classic example of this. The Execs pissed away likely over $100m plus stranded 100,000 pax all over. In refusing to budge over the AME's demands which amounted to only an extra $8m, which they ended up paying anyway after 3 days of strikes. Corporate blood suckers is right.

On the subject of Encore, I believe we will see it sold off shortly. Certainly before the IPO. The business model is no longer sustainable. This may be why their MEC chair sold them up the river by agreeing to no firm career progression in exhange for some higher captain pay. Likely the writing was on the wall during negotiations that "flow" is a thing of the distant past.

See Canadaflyer46 can understand it, not sure why these other multiple (suspiciously) newly created accounts have such a hard time understanding an argument that contains a couple of complex sentences. Even though I don't agree with some of Canadaflyer46's points, they understand that each negotiation has different factors.

On the topic of ONLY ENCORE PILOTS IN THE LAST AGREEMENT, the pilots' negotiating position was significantly different than the AMEs, mainline pilots or even Air Canada pilots. For Encore, I've never said ONLY pilot wages were a factor or that the company would suddenly shut down if there was a strike. BUT, as the above account shows, management will indeed cut off their nose to spite their face. Encore has 35 Q400s, they are still operating the equivalent of 17. Why? If pilot wages make no difference how come they haven't offered DECs $300,000 to come fly a Q? They could probably staff the whole fleet of 35 aircraft with those wages, YET... they don't. No one has seemed to address this in their arguments that Encore pilots should have held out for more.

The reason other employee groups such as the AMEs, Mainline Pilots and AC pilots had significantly more leverage than Encore is that the airline itself would basically shut down with them taking job action. That's simply not the case for Encore during their last round of negotiations.

As for me "justifying" Encore wages I'd only suggest you read the posts a little more in-depth and then brush up on your US Airline history.

[cdnavater]

It is crazy pilots think wage increases are the epitome of market profitability.

Look at Delta/United/American. Those pilots are upper class straight up. Most valuable airline brands in the world and profitable nonetheless.

Onex has a market cap of $8 billion. If they paid they had starting captain pay of $150 a hour. How much would that cost? 100 pilots x $40 x 1000 hrs = $4 million

Less than one executive and you got all your problems solved. No foreign bullshit required. Hiring top candidates.

But instead these corporate blood suckers would rather do anything but. I think some of these sympathizers need to realize that you are negotiating against pieces of shit and stop the Stockholm Syndrome that plagues pilots.

Just get to reality and stop it with the excuses. Bede, JBI, others. Just stop. No more excuses.

The WJ AME strike was a classic example of this. The Execs pissed away likely over $100m plus stranded 100,000 pax all over. In refusing to budge over the AME's demands which amounted to only an extra $8m, which they ended up paying anyway after 3 days of strikes. Corporate blood suckers is right.

On the subject of Encore, I believe we will see it sold off shortly. Certainly before the IPO. The business model is no longer sustainable. This may be why their MEC chair sold them up the river by agreeing to no firm career progression in exhange for some higher captain pay. Likely the writing was on the wall during negotiations that "flow" is a thing of the distant past.

See Canadaflyer46 can understand it, not sure why these other multiple (suspiciously) newly created accounts have such a hard time understanding an argument that contains a couple of complex sentences. Even though I don't agree with some of Canadaflyer46's points, they understand that each negotiation has different factors.

On the topic of ONLY ENCORE PILOTS IN THE LAST AGREEMENT, the pilots' negotiating position was significantly different than the AMEs, mainline pilots or even Air Canada pilots. For Encore, I've never said ONLY pilot wages were a factor or that the company would suddenly shut down if there was a strike. BUT, as the above account shows, management will indeed cut off their nose to spite their face. Encore has 35 Q400s, they are still operating the equivalent of 17. Why? If pilot wages make no difference how come they haven't offered DECs $300,000 to come fly a Q? They could probably staff the whole fleet of 35 aircraft with those wages, YET... they don't. No one has seemed to address this in their arguments that Encore pilots should have held out for more.

The reason other employee groups such as the AMEs, Mainline Pilots and AC pilots had significantly more leverage than Encore is that the airline itself would basically shut down with them taking job action. That's simply not the case for Encore during their last round of negotiations.

As for me "justifying" Encore wages I'd only suggest you read the posts a little more in-depth and then brush up on your US Airline history.

Correct, by all accounts a strike would have just had WJ shift flying where able and cancel routes as necessary, they could absolutely fix the problem by paying more but that just makes Encore uneconomical!
However that should not be a factor on whether or not to approve the TFWs, companies in Canada have become accustomed to taking the easy road with this government and governments past!
Don’t want to bargain, dig in and the feds with legislate or force arbitration, don’t want to increase pay, apply for foreign workers, etc…
I’m really, really pissed that Trudeau has been forcing and threatening workers back to work but sits back and lets the postal workers go on strike, what a friggen hypocrite, this is not helping the economy. I have several packages being held up in the closed post office and anything I’ve ordered since is now being shipped by other, presumably more expensive means. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support the postal workers right to strike and am glad they are but this government, is saving money and digging in when they wouldn’t let other workers exercise their right to strike!
Enough is enough!

[3rdWorldClassPilot]

Holy shit...

Pilot wages are going to make Encore uneconomical.

I guess we better bring in cheap foreign pilots to save the Brandon, Penticton, Fort St Johns etc routes.

Or maybe just close those airports forever. The pilots were too expensive to operate. I'm sure no one will notice and government won't care about the hundreds of millions lost in commerce.

All because pilots were too expensive.

[FelixGustof]

What I don't understand is how there are ads for foreign pilots after a new contract.

Isn't this evidence in itself that they negotiated below market rates?

[Donald]

First step, try to get foreign pilots.

Second step, start a new "Open Skies" agreement and allow US regionals to do point-to-point service in Canada.

Third step, destroy Canadian aviation altogether.

[A310Heavy]

First step, try to get foreign pilots.

Second step, start a new "Open Skies" agreement and allow US regionals to do point-to-point service in Canada.

Third step, destroy Canadian aviation altogether.

But US regionals pay literally double. Sometimes more.

If they operated in Canada, those big salaries would put those airlines out of business, allegedly.

[goingnowherefast]

Let the US airlines operate point-to-point in Canada, and in exchange that they must hire Canadian pilots.

[daedalusx]

Feds approved it. Another liberal betrayal of the native born Canadian.

[ruffdeezy]

They are trying to get an LMIA for someone already here whose work permit for something else or study permit for training has expired or expiring soon. Probably they have a lot of hours, got the TC licence on a study permit, and now they have some connection to westjet to get in because i don't think they would accept applications for people who are not eligible to work here.

[flyingcanuck]

Feds approved it. Another liberal betrayal of the native born Canadian.

Give it a rest, libs and cons will both approve it

[daedalusx]

Feds approved it. Another liberal betrayal of the native born Canadian.

Give it a rest, libs and cons will both approve it

Oh, I’m well aware that the scum bags over at the CPC would have approved it as well

[AV80R]

Several maritime union leaders claim that shipping-related employers may be misusing Ottawa’s temporary foreign workers program to hire an increasing number of temporary foreign workers.

https://www.biv.com/news/transportation ... y-10495081